


seeketh not itself to please

by luckybarton



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Clint Barton Is a Good Bro, Everyone Needs A Hug, Getting Together, Hopeful Ending, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt Stephen Strange, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Overstimulation, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Pining Tony Stark, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Sacrifice, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Is a Good Bro, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, everyone is a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 15:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16579091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckybarton/pseuds/luckybarton
Summary: Thanos is gone, and the dust has settled. But for Peter and Stephen, every small gust of wind feels like it could turn them to it, and Tony is left with the pieces.





	seeketh not itself to please

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bold_seer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bold_seer/gifts).



_ Peter comes back to life the same way he left it. He forms from dust, dust that becomes lungs that breathe the harsh air of Titan and skin that seems like it will still crumble to the touch. His senses scream  _ danger, danger, danger, _ though there’s nothing there. Nothing that can or will immediately harm him, though he knows that if he stays here for long, he will die. _

_ He hears his name. Hears it again. Someone is calling him, somewhere, but its source is lost amidst the thousand small noises that his heightened senses alert him to. It was like this when he first got his powers, but never since. He’d turned off as many lights as possible and lain unmoving in his bed, the smallest action inducing a cascade of unpleasant sensations. He hadn’t been sure if it would ever end. _

_ Peter hears himself scream before he registers the sensation of a hand on his back. He throws the unknown person off him, who disappears with a flash while airborne and reappears a few feet in front of Peter, sizing him up. _

_ “Dr. Strange,” Peter croaks. Blinks. Stitches the last few moments together into something coherent. “Oh my god. I threw you.” _

_ “Apologize later,” Strange says, and extends a trembling hand. “Hold onto me. We’re going home.” _

_ Peter holds on. _

_ The first thing Peter sees when he arrives on Earth is  _ bright, bright, ow, stoppit, _ so he screws his eyes shut and laces his fingers behind the back of his head before sliding his palms to his ears when the people around him start talking, their lowered voices still loud and painful. He holds his breath, then gasps for air minutes later when his lungs give way. Holds it again. It’s a sensation he can hold onto moment-to-moment. Something that proves that he’s still here. _

_ He hears people leaving. The room gets quieter, and through his eyelids he can tell that it’s darker. He blinks them open, and doesn’t know where he is. _

_ “Mr. Stark,” he breathes. Tony stands across from him, holding onto Stephen as if he thinks he is going to disappear. As if he couldn’t stand without him. There’s static in his eyes, and he sees movement and hears shouting before the edges of his vision go away and he passes out entirely. _

* * *

* * *

“It’s different for me,” Stephen murmurs to Tony. They’re walking through a park in the middle of the city. It’s more brown than green at this time of year, but it’s good to be outside. “It’s different for me than it is for Peter. I knew what was happening, understood it. The rest of them—”

Tony nods. The wind whips around them, and Stephen stiffens. Finally, Tony echoes him. “It is different.” He swallows. “But that doesn’t mean that you don’t understand any of it. I don’t.”

“You try,” Stephen says, after the wind dies down. “I think that’s enough.”

Tony’s used to being dragged (figuratively and literally—but really mostly figuratively) out of his workshop, if he’s been obsessively working on something or if he’s just too stuck in his head  to get out. He isn’t used to doing the dragging, though the places he finds Peter and Stephen are rarely ever the workshop. They both just appear out of nowhere, Stephen perhaps more literally than Peter—usually into the common spaces, but sometimes in weird places that Jarvis informs him about, like the side of the building (Peter) or a room that doesn’t even look like Tony’s workshop but “has the same energy signature” (Stephen). Usually with some kind of problem. Usually one they’re unwilling to talk about.

Tony walks with Stephen a lot. Sometimes he walks with Peter, but on nicer days when a gust isn’t likely to send him spiralling. Peter’s gotten better, recently, but like a lot of kids who were turned to ash, he isn’t even going to school this year. Aunt May’s insistence. Though Peter fervently denies that it’s for the best, Tony privately agrees with her. Nothing’s been quite as bad as when Stephen first brought him back from Titan, but the kid isn’t okay for going outside most of the time.

Peter’s being given the time, but it’s tough as all hell to get him to take it.

As for Stephen, he’s told Tony on more than one occasion that ‘protecting the universe is a full-time job’. Tony doesn’t bring that up on times like these, when Stephen spends time with him without aim or purpose.

Stephen makes him feel warm.

* * *

 

“You need to have more normal friendships,” Clint tells him, as Tony’s trying to demonstrate a new kind of bowstring to him. And when Hawkeye tells you this, well. You’re fucked.

“I have normal friendships,” Tony says, and then deflects by starting a spiel about the composition of the thread.

Clint folds his arms. “Man, just let me try it.”

Clint hits the target dead-on, but then again, he could do that with a kids’ bow from Walmart. It doesn’t mean anything, and Tony waits for his judgement.

“You can’t have made this  _ just _ for me,” he says, running his fingers over the string. “Tony.”

“So, you like it,” Tony says. “I mean, yeah, I did. There are other applications, too, but...” he trails off.

Clint nods. “Thank you,” he says. “You didn’t have to.”

“Of course I didn’t have to,” Tony says. “But I did.”

“You don’t need to invent something to get me to come over, Tony,” Clint says, softly. “Or any of us.”

Tony blinks, pauses. “That isn’t—”

Clint hands the bow back. “It’s fine,” he says. Tony nods.

They don’t talk about the bow for the rest of Clint’s visit. They talk about movies, how some studio is already dramatizing the war against Thanos.

“They asked me to be a consultant!” Clint exclaims, and shakes his head. “But I wouldn’t. They didn’t offer enough, anyway.”

“I would’ve bought you out,” Tony says. “Whatever you took, doubled.”

Clint laughs. “They went after everyone else, too. I thought Scott would’ve done it.”

“I haven’t heard anything from Peter,” Tony says.

“People still don’t know he’s Spiderman,” Clint notes. “And Spiderman’s pretty hard to find, recently.”

“You saw him when he came back,” Tony murmurs. “And I can find him for you. He’s around a lot.”

“Is he—”

“Yes,” Tony finishes, before Clint can ask. “He’s doing everything he’s supposed to be doing, and more. The ‘more’ is the concerning part.”

“Tell me about it,” Clint says.

Tony shakes his head. “I don’t know what to start with.”

* * *

 

Peter’s latest attempt at getting over the fear of falling apart is to wrap himself in duct-tape (‘as a precaution’) and stand on the roof of the Tower. It ends predictably, with Jarvis flying a suit up and taking him inside before calling for assistance.

“I just have to scare myself really hard, and then I’ll never be scared again,” Peter says, using a pair of scissors to remove the taped-up clothes he’s encased himself in.

Tony shakes his head. “Not how it works, kid.”

“It should be,” Peter says. Pieces of a shirt sleeve fall to the floor, and he freezes.

“Give it time,” Tony says, knowing full well it’s not all that Peter needs. “It helps.” 

Peter nods. The scissors dangle limply from his fingers.

“Do you want help?”

Peter nods again.

“I’m not going to cut it all the way off you. I don’t want to see you naked,” Tony says. He cuts down Peter’s back, and the sides of his legs. “Not looking. Not looking.” When he looks back. Peter has put on the clothes he found for him—a pair of sweatpants, and a t-shirt two times his size. It’s an improvement. “Does your aunt know you’re here?”

“No,” Peter says, mutedly.

“I’ll call her,” Tony says. “Or you can.”

“You call her.”

“Okay.”

It won’t take long for Peter to go back to his normal mode of talking—a hundred miles per hour and about every topic on the planet—and Tony knows this. Knows this because this has happened enough times to form a pattern, that Peter’s so determined to  _ keep trying _ that he won’t even stop when it’s killing him.

Tony just hopes that it doesn’t come to that.

He’s hanging up the call with May when he hears a portal close behind him. “Strange,” he says, without turning. Shoves the phone into his pocket.

“Tony,” Stephen says.

“It’s the wrong time,” Tony states, and wishes he wasn’t so fucking sober. Stephen doesn’t sound like he’s leaving, so he turns around. “Stephen.”

Stephen cocks his head, makes some kind of expression that looks like concern. “Are you alright?” Yep. Concern.

Tony shrugs. “It’s not me.”

“Oh.”

“Do I really look that shit?” Tony asks. He’s only half joking, and decides that’s a good thing when Stephen replies that yes, yes he does. “Peter’s in the other room. He fell asleep.”

A muffled, indignant voice comes from the other room. “I’m not asleep!”

“Guess not,” Tony says. “Want to go through?”

They go through, and Tony isn’t quite sure if he likes this. It’s weird to have Stephen and Peter here at the same time, weirder still when it’s painfully clear that they’re both here because something’s wrong.

“You also look terrible,” Stephen says, more bluntly than Tony expects.

Peter shrugs. “I’m not asleep, but I am tired.”

“You climbed to the roof of the Tower to play windsock,” Tony says, pointedly. “You  _ should _ be tired.” Stephen raises an eyebrow. Tony shrugs. “It’s what he did.”

Stephen turns to Peter. “Do you do this a lot?”

“No,” Peter says, “I mean, yes, I mean, I don’t do this  _ specifically _ a lot, but—”

“Peter,” Stephen says, witheringly.

“It didn’t blow me away,” Peter states, almost as if repeating a mantra. “It didn’t blow me away.” They sit in silence. Peter breaks it, long moments later. “I know it won’t. I  _ know _ that. But most of the time, it doesn’t feel like I left Titan.” He swallows. “I have to try  _ everything. _ Or I’m never going to escape.”

* * *

 

“He sounds like me,” Tony confides to Stephen, once Peter is actually asleep and they’re several floors away for good measure. “God. He sounds  _ exactly _ like me.” They’re sitting together on an ugly sofa Tony doesn’t remember acquiring but is rather glad he has. Near enough to feel each other’s presence. Not near enough to touch.

“Why do you think he keeps coming back?” Stephen asks, rhetorically.

“Why do  _ you _ keep coming back?” Tony snaps. “I mean, sorry. I’m sorry.”

“It’s a fair question,” Stephen says.

“You don’t need to...”

“No,” Stephen says, firmly. “I come back because I’m selfish. I come back because you  _ understand _ what’s happened, and I don’t need to explain it. I come back even though it’s draining you.” He leans back. “I come back, even though I know all this. It isn’t fair.”

“It isn’t selfish to... talk to people,” Tony says, his mouth dry, and wonders why he doesn’t apply the same logic to himself. “It isn’t. Bad stuff happened. It sucked. Nobody gets it. Etcetera.” He stares ahead. “I’ve been there and done that too many times to count. So stop killing yourself over it.”

“Nothing bad happened.” Stephen shakes his head. “Nothing, comparatively, to what happened to you, to Peter. In my entire life. The greatest horror in my life led to me  _ becoming a sorcerer. _ On a chart of magnitude, that doesn’t even register.”

“If you want,” Tony replies. “Look. It’s not about what happened, or when, or what happened to some other guy. It’s just not. And don’t  _ assume _ I don’t want you around, because—everything you just said, I had kind of figured out.”

“So why  _ do _ you want me around?” Stephen asks.

“Because I’m selfish,” Tony says. He won’t take it further than that.

* * *

 

“You know,” Tony says, looking across to Clint, “I think it’s like this. The more shit that happens, the better you are at the shit the next time the shitstorm comes around. And Peter hasn’t seen that much shit.”

“There was that thing with the Vulture,” Clint points out.

“But not at this scale. Not dying-and-coming-back-and-the-universe-almost-ending. That’s something I’ve done before. That’s basically something you’ve done before.  _ Strange _ has had experiences like that, though fuck him if he’ll admit it.” Tony rolls his eyes. “Look. This is something I understand, and for once in my life I can be the constant instead of the instigator of the fucking disaster itself.”

Clint snorts. “Yeah, but you try being that for everyone and you’ll just fuck yourself up harder.”

Tony glares at him. “Do you see my litany of choices here?”

“Stephen Strange is a grown-ass man and a medical doctor,” Clint says. “Peter’s another case, but, dude. Stop acting like you have to be  _ giving _ everyone something at all times. It’s...” he shakes his head. “You didn’t used to do this. And maybe this is better. But I want to know why.”

“Because the world keeps trying to rip the people I l— _ care _ about away.  _ Why _ should I let anything be more than transactional?”

“Tony,” Clint says, “what do you think you’re giving me?”

“The fucking bow, Clint,” Tony says. “The fucking bow. And—for what it’s worth, which is  _ fucking nothing, _ I love Stephen. Even when he’s a jerk.”

Clint blinks. “You’re together?”

Tony looks away. “No. We aren’t.”

“You’re pulling yourself apart, Tony,” Clint says. “You need to do something. This isn’t going to last.”

“So you’re saying we should get together,” Tony says.

“God, no,” Clint says. “You’d make a terrible couple. But it would be better than... whatever  _ this _ is.” He pauses. “Look, I’ve been in a lot of shitty relationships. I’ve been the shit one in the relationship. And that includes friendships, and the point is that I know one when I see one and this level of dishonesty is not okay.”

Tony nods. “You know, for once, you’re right.”

“I’m never right,” Clint says. “But sometimes I get close.”

* * *

 

This time, Tony drops in on Stephen, who curses and drops some (presumed magical) artifact when the door to the Sanctum creaks open.

“You should be glad my cloak caught that,” Stephen says. “That was Oulanemmeni’s Artifice. You could have—”

“The cloak caught it,” Tony says, stepping further in. “You busy?”

“As busy as ever,” Stephen says. The cloak flies off him and deposits the object in some kind of storage container. It looks like a shiny vase.

“Clint just gave me the world’s biggest do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do,” Tony says. “And against all judgement, I decided to listen to him.”

“What did he say?” Stephen asks. Sounding apprehensive.

“I’ve fallen in love with you,” Tony says, fists clenched. “And fuck me if I know what to do about it.”

“That’s...” Stephen starts. “I didn’t expect that.”

“Neither did I,” Tony says, the words thick in his mouth. “And I’m sorry, I know you don’t feel that way, but I—I had to. I had to say it.”

“It’s not that I don’t reciprocate. Or can’t,” Stephen replies. “It just... it doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

“What we have right now isn’t a good idea,” Tony says. “It’s a terrible idea. But this—it could be better. If you want to. If you don’t, we can forget I ever said anything.”

“We can try it,” Stephen says. “A relationship.”

“This is the worst,” Tony says. “The actual worst.”

“Maybe,” Stephen says. “But that means that it can only get better.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fic for Multifandom Tropefest, and it spiralled out into this gnarled-ass ball of angst. I hope my recipient enjoys it!


End file.
